Canada's Prosperity at Risk Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Canada's Prosperity at Risk - Essay Example The country at the focal point of the study happens to be Canada. Canada is one of the most developed and richest countries in the world. The country is blessed rich natural resources and has a diverse and highly educated population. However, the country is going through a phase of change and facing certain challenges on various fronts which could reduce the prosperity of the nation. (Cowan, 2005). Based on in depth research it has been decided that the country faces prosperity challenges in the domain of infrastructure, innovation, demographics, natural resource, government regulation and politics. From an infrastructural point of view it is to be said that the cities of Canada are at the cross roads. The government of Canada does not have any strong agenda on the infrastructural commitments. From the perspective of innovation the prosperity of the country is threatened on three fronts such as the global competition, demographics and productivity. There is very little doubt over the fact that China has a population which is highly educated and skilled. But from a demographic perspective off late the country has been facing a problem of aging population. As mentioned before, Canada has been blessed with rich and large amount of natural resources. Such resources are used for the production of energy which also happens to be a major contributor to the overall GDP of the country. But the growing demand of power has been creating a misbalance in the ecosystem. Also another major problem faced by the country has been the fact the present government regulations are believed to be quite complex and lack robustness. On the political fore front there lie various political complexities especially in the domain of taxations. The present looks to critically analyze all the cause and effects of the challenges mentioned above and looks to propose probable recommendations to over the challenges (Henry, 2008). Cause and effect From the perspective of innovation one of the majo r challenges faced by the country is the transformation face of the global economy. The global economy is still looking to recover from the after effects of the 2008 recession. Also the economy is going through a transformation phase due to the rise of the emerging economies like china, India, Brazil, etc. This most certainly creates opportunities for the exporters and investors of the country. But the continuous expansion of information and technologies would lead to a high value knowledge network. As a result each and every Canadian enterprise is faced with new levels of intense competition. Just like some of the other developed countries one of the major problems faced by the country is of aging population. The increasing number of proportion of senior citizens would add to the demand of the demand of services in the public domain, especially health care. Also aging the population would mean that there would less number of working and taxpaying Canadians. However, the biggest cha llenge would come in the form of its effect on the labour market; which would be discussed later (Burgemeister, 2003). Also the innovation of the nation would depend upon the growth of the productivity. However, the recent performance of Canada leaves a lot of scope for improvement. Over the last decade or so the productivity grew by just 0.7 percent. This is far below as compared to other developed countries like USA if the rate of growth in productivity in the near future then the potential economic growth of the